author
Harold Chapman Brown
1879–1943
An early 20th-century American philosopher and teacher, he wrote about pragmatism, learning, and the philosophy of science, and spent much of his career at Stanford. His work connects academic philosophy with practical questions about how people think and learn.
1 Audiobook
Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude
by John Dewey, Boyd Henry Bode, Harold Chapman Brown, Horace Meyer Kallen, George H. Mead, Addison Webster Moore, Henry Waldgrave Stuart, James Hayden Tufts
About the author
Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on April 2, 1879, he studied at Williams College and then at Harvard, where he earned his PhD in philosophy in 1905. His early work was shaped by philosopher Josiah Royce, and he went on to teach first at Columbia before joining Stanford University in 1914.
Brown wrote on pragmatism, education, and the philosophy of science. He is associated with Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude and, with Edwin B. Holt, Animal Drive and the Learning Process, a book later noted in discussions of social cognitive theory.
Archival and reference sources also describe him as active beyond the classroom, including involvement in the Palo Alto Teachers Union and the Palo Alto Cooperative Society. He died in 1943.